Tigana
Jon Henderson Jean Tigana could have been excused for feeling nervous at the start of the Football League season. He knows as well as anyone that Mohamed al-Fayed’s munificence – a salary of about oe500 000 for the new manager and resources to buy players that no other first division club enjoys – comes not so much with strings attached as with a thick rope with a noose at the end. Fulham’s photo-conscious pharaoh may smile a lot, but he doesn’t have a history of feeling comfortable with failure (as in missing out on promotion to the Premiership).
If Tigana is nervous, though, he certainly isn’t showing it. At the club’s training ground in London, he exudes more English phlegm than French frenzy as he quietly puts the players through a training session. And afterwards, settled in his office, the Frenchman seems genu-inely carefree.
Tigana says he understands Fayed’s desire for success. “It’s normal, you want to win. When I was a manager in France, it was the same. It’s the same with all clubs. It’s life. But it doesn’t worry me. I work from morning to night to the maximum and therefore, whatever happens, I can have no regrets.”
But the most convincing proof that Tigana is not overburdened by anxiety is provided by his appearance. Aged 45, he is still as trim as he was during his great playing days when his technical excellence compensated for lack of physical presence and made him an essential member of the famous midfield quartet – completed by Michel Platini, Alain Giresse and Luis Fernandez – that carried France to the 1984 European championship. His dark hair remains unflecked by grey and his eyes are bright and darting in a face whose smooth planes show no signs of ageing. One look at the man who continued his playing career with Olympique Marseille until the age of 36 must dispel any doubts the Fulham players may have about the diet- conscious regime that Tigana advocates. Tigana’s interests away from football have almost certainly helped to protect him from the toll that club management has exacted from so many of those who have given themselves too completely to the job. He sold one vineyard near Bordeaux recently, but still owns another just north of Marseilles, which is not bad for a former postman who was born in Mali and came to France as a young boy when his father joined the French army. But a greater, and more important, distraction is his family. He says that one of the two reasons he decided to join Fulham was the cultural opportunity it offered him, his wife Carole and their three children. Although his older son, Yannick, who is 20, is staying behind to continue his education in France, Julien (14) and his five-year- old daughter, Canelle, will both be going to London schools. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for them to open their eyes to a new country. I am very, very happy.” The second reason is that he is fired by the excitement of the challenge, not of performing some sort of missionary role spreading the word of French football, but of trying to gain Fulham promotion to the Premiership, a league for which he has considerable respect. He’s on track, with the club unbeaten so far this season and sitting pretty at the top of the log. “Because of Gerard Houllier and ArsSne Wenger I have been watching the Premiership all the time, and I think it’s a good competition.”
He is reluctant to admit that Fayed’s money is a third reason for his having come to a first division side, but he concedes that the training facilities, in which Fulham have invested heavily over the past 18 months, were a factor in persuading him to join. The promise of an expensively revamped Craven Cottage – a planning application is due to go before Hammersmith council in the autumn – was also “very, very important”. From the point of view of entering the transfer market, though, he points out that having a treasure chest to strengthen the squad has been of little help given that players of the quality he would like – both British and foreign – are not prepared to join a first division side, albeit one that can offer so much in immediate comforts and the prospect of imminent greater ones. He has made only two significant purchases, the 21-year-old striker Louis Saha for oe2,1-million from the French club Metz, a deal that was financed anyway by selling Geoff Horsfield to Birmingham, and John Collins, the Scottish midfielder who played for Tigana at Monaco, for oe2,2-million. Tigana finishes the interview with a comment that offers an intriguing insight into his character. Asked to identify the greatest
moment in his playing career, he says: “For me, the good moment is now. In my house, you will find no photographs on the wall and no trophies.” He hasn’t even watched tapes of his outstanding contribution to France’s 1984 European triumph. You start to understand why Fayed’s noose holds no terrors for him.